About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure.
Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

This article originally showed up in the Chico Enterprise Record, and that newspaper employs some of the worst writers and “journalists” that I’ve ever seen. Sadly, this report was just par for the course, and another example of why the ER is a continual embarrassment.

These days, I get madder at some cyclists than the cops. Last night, driving home from the airport, some clown on a commuter rig (no helmet, no lights, no reflectors) sails through a stale yellow (red, in fact), then has to stop in the middle of a freeway onramp to let the green light traffic pass… then promptly hooks a left turn on red and starts up a steep hill in the center of the traffic lane.

My dad was a Louisiana State Trooper, in the days before pepper spray and Tasers. They used Monadnock PR-24 nightsticks—the ones that have a handle and look like martial arts weapons. Tasers are nicer, but I think the sticks are more effective.

So immediately after I finish work I head to the corner store to get cold beverages for a party later in the evening. I hop over the curb, roll a few feet to a pay phone in front of the store and lock my bike. I struggle for a bit to get the chain lock around the large post. As I am doing so I notice a police officer out of the corner of my eye watching me. When I stand up he says: “You know it’s illegal to ride your bike on the sidewalk?” I freeze. I just cleared my name a few days earlier in court for a bullshit summons for “Riding bicycle on sidewalk”. I look him in the eye and say: I’m getting a beer and going home. He asks what I do for a living. I tell him that I am a bicycle messenger. He repeats again that I should know it’s illegal to ride on the sidewalk. I tell him I know, but that I just wanted to get a beer and sit on my couch less than a hundred yards away. He takes my name, address and gives me a warning. I thought to give him a fake name, but realized that if he asked for an ID and it didn’t match what I had already given him, I’d be royally fucked. I was torn between a blinding rage at being hassled for such a insignificant infraction and trying to beg for mercy. I was thinking if I had gotten a ticket he would have needed a taser and back up…

I get to the party later and my friend’s boyfriend got snagged by the cops for the same reason. Unfortunately for him, he had warrants and had to spend the night in jail.

In what city or jurisdiction do you live that riding on the sidewalk is a harrassable offense? It is legal here in Pugetropolis, and there are a few steep hills around town that I climb on the sidewalk rather than bang elbows with the enraged SUV drivers.